Panel 1:
(Branch is talking to Tom, which is to say that she's talking to him while he sits motionless. This probably is at the coffee shop. Her word balloons should be in smaller text and intrusive, almost poking Tom off of his chair.)

BRANCH: "so I watched farscape the other day and then i realized it had been months since i read my books so i picked up all of them and you know house of cards is really the best but im still missing dark side of the sun"

Panel 2:

BRANCH: "which is funny because it was the first out but theres a continuity discrepancy in season three and cards where critchon says that he was an astronaut but really there was no nasa in the farscape it was asa"

Panel 3:

BRANCH: "then my kitty jumped up on me shes named aeryn and some day ill get a tawny called crichton but he has to have that blocky face you know and they have to fall in love"

TOM (small): "Shut up."

Panel 4:

BRANCH: "pardon?"

TOM (leaping out of his chair): "SHUT UP! For GOD'S SAKE, do you EVER STOP TALKING?"

Panel 5:

TOM: "I've NEVER WATCHED FARSCAPE! You KNOW this? Why do you insist on talking as if everyone knows the most intimate details of the things that interest you?"

Panel 6:
(Silence. Branch is obviously upset, in that Branch-like way, but doesn't know what to say. Tom picks up a book, reading it with the utmost content.)

Panel 7:
(Karla comes over to put a hand on Branch's shoulder and looks at Tom angrily, who is oblivious.)

Panel 8:
(Karla glares at Tom with such force that he notices, looking as if he shouldn't have to but not daring to contradict his wife.)

Panel 9:
TOM: "….I'm sorry, Branch."

(Branch looks up hopefully)

Panel 10:
(Back to normal)

BRANCH: "and when you look at the peacekeeper DVD you totally wont believe what happened to dargo…."

TOM (thinking, obviously disgusted): "The problem with being nice to nerds is that they take silence for adoration."

Ferrett Says

Today, we introduce Branch, and Roni and I had a unique problem – we wanted Branch to have a different voice, which meant a different font. What that font should be, however, was a weird process.

See, the whole point of Branch is that she is annoying and tends to drone on – as you’ll see from today’s strip – and that’s a slight problem from a writing perspective. See, in most strips, if there are a lot of words, there’s a lot of content, and so you have to read every bit. But with Branch, what she says is frequently just her meandering thought process, which may or may not have anything to do with the topic at hand. Thus, you as the reader might feel a little frustrated at having read three balloons of pure nothingness, only to discover that it was senseless kitty talk.

Thus, we make the font a little unreadable. But alas, what Branch has to say is not always useless – so if you can’t keep your eyes on it ever, you’re going to miss the occasional point. And so it was that Roni and I debated about how to create a font that said, “You can skim this stuff.” As, in fact, Tom does 99% of the time.

I don’t know how successful we are – I didn’t want to go with a pain-in-the-ass font, like Delirium’s font from Sandman. But the fact that Roni and I spent two days discussing what sort of font we wanted to use for Branch should tell you that we’re both way more anal retentive than we need to be.